Video: On second thought, maybe that Disney/Lucasfilm deal wasn’t such a hot idea

posted at 8:01 pm on October 31, 2012 by Allahpundit

To cleanse the palate. I spent a whole post yesterday encouraging you to be optimistic and not assume that Disney taking over “Star Wars” would mean they’ll double down on the kitsch. Then I saw the new video from Disney Parks. Consider this a formal retraction.

Actually, reading this AP story, it occurs to me that maybe we don’t want Disney to be hands off with the “Star Wars” franchise. People keep patting them on the back for not messing around much with Marvel, but “Star Wars” does need some messing with. Rule one: Read my lips — no new Jar Jars. Rule two: Story, story, story. Disney CEO Robert Iger told investors yesterday that they already have a “lengthy treatment that we feel really good about”; I sure hope he’s not referring to the treatment written by you know who.

Two clips for you, one the Disney Parks schlock, the other via Josh Trevino of something filmed at one of the theme parks last year that looks like the makings of a number for the now inevitable sequel to the “Star Wars Christmas Special.”

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Two clips for you, one the Disney Parks schlock, the other via Josh Trevino of something filmed at one of the theme parks last year that looks like the makings of a number for the now inevitable sequel to the “Star Wars Christmas Special.”

I think this is hilarious. Some of you guys take Star Wars WAY TOO seriously.

Many kids love Star Wars movie and books. These titles are some of the most popular items at the library. Kids also love the Disney parks. It’s going to make going to the Disney parks that much more fun.

And, seriously, could the new Star Wars movies be be worse than the prequels that Lucas gave us? No, I’m sure they will be much better. Look how Disney handled the “Pirates” franchise… not too shabby. And Pixar is still going strong and has their own identity after the Disney partnership.

So, I say the Disney/Lucasfilm merger is a very good thing for people who like both Disney and Star Wars.

Disney has had a Star Wars themed simulator ride named “Star Tours” for years here in Florida at Disney Hollywood Studios (formerly Disney MGM Studios). I think they also have “Star Tours” in California. They have numerous live shows with Star Wars look-alike actors as well as Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, etc. characters dressed up in Star Wars costumes signing autographs.
What’s the big deal?

From what I’ve heard, Lucas has essentially been demoted down to a consultant with this deal, and the final decision on most aspects of the film will be made by other minds. Basically, Disney is stating that they want to change Star Wars from a vessel to sell toys, back into a property with a broad long lasting appeal.

Basically, it sounds like they realize they cannot run the series into the ground the way Lucas has. They want new films every 3-4 years, and that won’t work if each new film is a disaster like the prequels.

That doesn’t mean the new films will be good, but thats somewhat promising at least.

ahhhhhhh.. never let a crisis go to waste…. if Sandy was a 100 year storm we got…. 99 years and 363 days to listen to the experts wrestle money from our pockets…. if it was a 500 years storm…well…hold on to your wallets kids

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) fulfilled all the hopes of Star Wars fanboys. It was directed by Irvin Kerschner and George Lucas wrote the story. He was an exceptional director who direct such quirky films as The Flim Flam Man and Never Say Never Again.

If Disney hopes to bring Star Wars to a fulfilling conclusion, they should find a director who will bring Kerschner’s dedication to the legend.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) fulfilled all the hopes of Star Wars fanboys. It was directed by Irvin Kerschner and George Lucas wrote the story.

itsspideyman on October 31, 2012 at 9:02 PM

Wrong. Lucas provided the story treatment (framework), but had very little to do with Empire because he was busy building Skywalker Ranch and related infrastructure. Leigh Brackett and Larry Kasdan wrote the script, and the final bore little resemblence to Lucas’ original. If you really want to know about this stuff, read The Secret History of Star Wars (free PDF).

Bottom line: Lucas provided the original inspiration for Star Wars and Empire, but the movies only turned out good because Lucas had so little control. He in fact hated what Brackett/Kasdan and Kershner did with Empire, and vowed to maintain absolute control for the following movie. He did, and that’s how we got The Teddy Bear Movie, which was really a dress-rehearsal for Episodes 1-3.

I like Star Wars, including all the movies (except Phantom Menace). They are exactly what they are supposed to be: summer blockbuster movies targeting kids and teens. The storyline is not going to get as much attention as the special effects or the schlock. You don’t like what they did to the story? Stop watching and stop caring.

Besides, everyone knows Star Trek is 10x better than Star Wars anyway. And The Lord of the Rings is 20x better than both.

Bottom line: Lucas provided the original inspiration for Star Wars and Empire, but the movies only turned out good because Lucas had so little control. He in fact hated what Brackett/Kasdan and Kershner did with Empire, and vowed to maintain absolute control for the following movie. He did, and that’s how we got The Teddy Bear Movie, which was really a dress-rehearsal for Episodes 1-3.
Splashman on October 31, 2012 at 9:16 PM

You guys fear the Lucas story… fear not the Lucas story… the Lucas story gave us Vader and Obi-Wan and Yoda in the first place.

Fear the Lucas direction.

While Lucas broke new ground with Episode IV, he also let Harrison Ford off with a delivery like “easyyoucallthateasy”, more interested in the spectacle than breathing life into his characters. Irwin Kirschner and Richard Marquand gave a lot more color and energy into Empire and Jedi, respectively. And while III was the sharpest of the prequels, the best parts are in the second half of the movie, and many of those scenes were guest-directed by Spielberg.

Other strong efforts where Lucas writes but someone else tells the story include the Indiana Jones films (directed by Spielberg) and Willow (directed by Ron Howard).

So for me this represents the best of all possible worlds: a fun Lucas jaunt with someone else in the driver’s seat.

Sorry. Anyone involved in the writing of the scripts for Episodes 1-3 is a proven moron, three times over. That means Lucas, and only Lucas.

It is not my contention that Star Wars and Empire are masterpieces of writing or filmmaking. They are not. But Jedi (the first in which Lucas maintained complete control) was a big step toward the dung heap, Ep1 was a flying leap into the dung heap, and Episodes 2 and 3 were unsuccessful attempts to climb back out.

I just got back from Disneyland and there is already a huge Star Wars presence there. Star Tours is a pretty cool ride in the Tomorrowland section and they have an outdoor show Jedi Training. The stores are full of Star Wars merchandise and I thought it was done pretty well. I did notice that it was focused on the non-human characters, if you will, not a lot of merchandise based on Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo, or Princess Leia, unless it was another Disney character dressed as them. For instance, my daughter loves Princess Leia (she has never been into the other Disney princesses thankfully) and the only Princess Leia souvineer we could find was trading pins, one with Miss Piggy dressed as Leia and the other with Minnie dressed as Leia. On the other hand there is tons of Darth Vadar, R2D2, C3PO, Yoda stuff.

Say what you will about Disney but they are genius at marketing and have managed to make a fortune on their character merchandise and keeping their brand current. As a parent, it’s so much easier watching a Disney movie than the other kiddie drivel out there, good story lines and character development. Other people have mentioned the Pirates of the Carribean, also Nightmare Before Christmas is still huge, they can be edgy. I’m hopeful they will handle Stars Wars well. In fact, I think they stand as good a chance as anyone.

Disney has so distorted the copyright process that now you can’t utilize material 80 years old without running afoul of lawyers. Works that should have come into the Public Domain sit sequestered, often in legal limbo because not only are the authors dead but the publishing houses are defunct, and yet the Disney backed copyright laws leaves anyone who dares use them open to law suit from anyone who can claim the original copyright.

All to protect a FRANCHISE.

Just one FRANCHISE has sought to make its BUSINESS MODEL into something PROTECTED BY CONGRESS.

That is the DISNEY WAY and it is vile. All to keep anyone from making a few bucks off of stuff DECADES OLD and beyond any conceivable length of copyright WHEN IT WAS MADE. Luckily Disney got that changed so they could sue anyone who DARED to touch the MOUSE.

Ginaswo, Indiana Jones ride was closed when I was there, kinda bummed.

Also interestingly Pirates of the Carribean has been a themed ride at Disney since the 60s/70s, long before the movie. I live the New Orleans area of Disneyland that holds it along with the Haunted Mansion, my favorite from childhood even before it went all Jack Skellington.

I guess when one thinks Disney they automatically think if the princess, I get that, but think even like the original Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Roger Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, there is some classic stuff in there that endures through the ages. And ok, I admit it, I live It’s a Small World, maybe I’m just a sucker. Never did get caught up in the classic princess though.

Disney has so distorted the copyright process that now you can’t utilize material 80 years old without running afoul of lawyers. Works that should have come into the Public Domain sit sequestered, often in legal limbo because not only are the authors dead but the publishing houses are defunct, and yet the Disney backed copyright laws leaves anyone who dares use them open to law suit from anyone who can claim the original copyright.

All to protect a FRANCHISE.

Just one FRANCHISE has sought to make its BUSINESS MODEL into something PROTECTED BY CONGRESS.

That is the DISNEY WAY and it is vile. All to keep anyone from making a few bucks off of stuff DECADES OLD and beyond any conceivable length of copyright WHEN IT WAS MADE. Luckily Disney got that changed so they could sue anyone who DARED to touch the MOUSE.

ajacksonian on October 31, 2012 at 9:56 PM

Disney has done what no other movie studio ever did. Actively worked to protect their history and outright identity.

Note that some studios sold off a good portion of their back catalog to TV distributors in the early 1950s, as TV stations needed content, and those libraries languished in movie studio vaults. The “Million Dollar Movie” came from the RKO library as Howard Hughes and General Tire dismantled that studio, only keeping the studio name for the TV/radio station chain.

Most famously, Warner Bros. sold their pre-1948 Looney Tunes catalog thinking it wasn’t of much value. (That’s how those “a.a.p.” idents came into being…) It got back in WB’s ownership via Ted Turner, who bought the history and library of MGM in 1986, and MGM wound up with that catalog via United Artists, a studio that died with “Heaven’s Gate.”

What Disney did in 1953 was approach ABC-TV with “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and taking a partial ownership stake in the network to boot. It served three purposes – it gave Disney an output for showcasing its’ back catalog to viewers pre-VHS/DVD, in addition to helping finance the construction of Disneyland, plus it saved ABC-TV from a probable demise, as it was NOWHERE along the ranks of CBS or NBC.

Interestingly enough, Disney only established a studio distribution service in 1953. RKO and United Artists distributed Disney productions prior to that.

I’m not saying what Disney has done was the RIGHT THING. Understand that. They just so happened to be the only studio that never voluntarily gave up any part of their history.

I knew when they applauded within the movie at the ending of the first one that things were not going to go well if there was a sequel (which needn’t have come, since the story ended,, technically… Vader could have starved to death in space, spinning to oblivion).

There should be a basic cinema rule:

Never applaud your own characters at the end, within your own movie.

Lucas’s “American Graffiti” was his best film.

He got the pompous bug after that, and the result was Binks. Jar-Jar- Binks.

Lucas has been the worst thing to happen to the Star Wars franchise. Which movie is generally considered the best of the original trilogy… Empire? Minimal direction from Lucas on that film. Look what happens when he gets total control – the slop that was the recent trilogy. Watch the Red Letter Media video ripping apart just Phantom Menace – I mean the movie does not deserve to even be a direct to video.

Lucas… I mean this is the guy who has made revisionism mainstream for movies – the ‘let’s re-release the same movie fifteen different times so I can buy a new yacht’ gameplan. This is a man who supposedly destroyed the unaltered original copies of the original trilogy – you’ve got movies from the beginning of movie history yet he taped over his original print… or is that he had to destroy it so the next generation wouldn’t know there was life before Jar-Jar?

Disney getting ahold of that franchise is not the end of the world – in fact, I trust them to do a better job of keeping consistency and not throwing in junk like the Force being an intelligent virus over Lucas getting the whim to revisit and revise everything on a moment’s notice because there aren’t enough Ewoks scampering around.

So cheers to you Disney, you may mess things up but you probably won’t mess them up worse than the main man Lucas himself has and probably would again.

If they decide to do another trilogy they could easily take the material of one of the great authors out there who has a better feel of the series than Lucas… personally I’m thinking Timothy Zahn.

And maybe his politics aren’t really what people agree with on this site but Joss Whedon couldn’t certainly direct and probably write a decent one. Heck, I think it might be awesome to go back to what their original gameplan was and give David Lynch a go – might not be comprehensible but sure would be a ride :D

2) Every non-gay dude I know thought she was really hot, especially in the 2nd and 3rd movies, (when she was in her 20′s).

3. You might find Downton Abbey more your style.

weirdo

Daikokuco on October 31, 2012 at 9:07 PM

What the hell is wrong with me???

No, what the hell is wrong with YOU??

She was 16 when PM was FILMED, and that’s just nasty – you perverts drooling over a little kid are nasty.

Also, she’s built like a scrawny 12 year old, even by hollyweird standards she’s frickin scrawny. He about putting a real women, preferably one is who old enough to order a beer for herself, and is through with school so she can stay out past 10???? Is that really too much to ask for you and all your “non gay” ( but totally into 16 year olds) dudes??

OK, everybody gets it: George Lucas, over the last 10-ish years, killed his only worthwhile creation.
Terrific.
Good for him, etc……Good for Disney Corp., etc…..
Why don’t we attack every semblance of Communism that encroaches our society instead?
All other efforts are wasted…